Contents

So far there have been lots of smartphones and tablets running FLOSS but this year a new kind of gadget is becoming mainstream, the computer on a stick. The best one I have seen comes with Ubuntu GNU/Linux or Android/Linux and you can connect USB keyboard/mouse and HDMI monitor/TV. That should work for everyone.

Several posts on Linux have recently captured my interest. The post 10 free Linux e-books provides a list of ten freely available Linux books. Each book is featured with an image of its cover along with a brief description and a link to the electronic version of the book. Titles include Advanced Linux Programming (2001), Java Application Development on Linux (2005), and Linux Network Administrator’s Guide, 2nd Edition (2000). One of the free referenced electronic Linux titles is The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction, a book that receives rave reviews from Peter N. M. Hansteen in yesterday’s post The Linux Command Line Is A Very Appealing Story. The Linux Command Line has tremendous breadth, covering topics ranging from use of vi, to shell scripting to basic Linux commands. Speaking of Linux commands, the post Linux Command Line Tips that Every Linux User Should Know provides an interesting summary of Linux command-line commands.

Kernel Space

Graphics Stack

Piglit, the OpenGL conformance test for Mesa, may see some improvements this summer thanks to Google’s Summer of Code initiative. In particular, there might be OpenCL support.

Added to the X.Org Summer of Code Ideas page by Tom Stellard at AMD was an action item to add OpenCL support to the Piglit test suite, which up for now has just been testing for OpenGL conformance/compatibility with Mesa. Stellard and others would like to see OpenCL framework support to test the OpenCL API functions, a test runner, lots of OpenCL tests, etc.

Applications

For everyone that wants to know more about the application finder for the Xfce4 desktop here it is. The coming 4.10 release is expected to bring some big changes to the application finder. They are planning to merge the xfce4-appfinder with xfrun4.

You can use the Xfce4 application finder to find and launch installed applications on your system. This is a very convenient little tool for finding lost applications. You can open the application finder by selecting run program from the main menu, or using the Alt + F2 keyboard shortcut.

Games

Easily one of the best RPG games for Linux and winner of Roguelike of the Year Award 2011, Tales of Maj’Eyal (ToME) has just been updated to Beta 38.

ToME is an open-source, single-player, tactical role-playing roguelike and action game set in the world of Eya. You are an adventurer, looking for old powers, treasure and glory. You boldly go in lost and forgotten places, untamed forests and sealed ruins.

New Releases

Red Hat Family

Following Red Hat’s announcement in late January that it was extending the standard support period for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 and 6 from seven to ten years, RHEL clones are now starting to follow suit.

Debian Family

Derivatives

Canonical/Ubuntu

Now that smartphones are getting bigger, PC’s are getting smaller and FXI Tech’s Cotton Candy “world’s smallest PC” is here at MWC and has just received a small design change, new features, and Android 4.0 is up next. Coming in at about the same size of a pack of gum this dual-core powered PC will be available this March so we snapped a few photos of the new design and it streaming games using Ubuntu.

For years now, the Canonical team has been attempting to set up Ubuntu as something more than just another Linux distribution. It’s definitely been a long road, filled with both ups and downs.

During this period of Ubuntu’s evolution, Canonical has managed to see success on both the desktop and server front. Where we’ve seen little to no activity however, is with Ubuntu on the tablet. Then again, remaining absent on the tablet may have been by design.

Given Canonical’s history of abandoned users and product announcements that come up short in execution, Shuttleworth’s most recent goal of 200 million users by 2015 doesn’t compute. There’s simply no path from “declining OS vendor” to “competing on an equal footing with Microsoft, Apple and Google.” It’s the sort of rhetoric a CEO would say to rally the troops, but it’s become obvious that it’s already too late.

Flavours and Variants

The Linux Mint development team has announced the availability of a release candidate (RC) for Linux Mint 12 LXDE, code-named “Lisa”. Aimed at developers and testers, the release candidate is based on Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot” and includes the Linux 3.0 kernel and version 0.5.0 of the lightweight LXDE desktop environment.

Phones

Open source mobile platform and spiritual son of MeeGo, Tizen, has gained a new supporter in the shape of Huawei, jumping on board just as the Tizen team releases the SDK beta and source code. Huawei is the latest member of the Tizen Association Board, and apparently intends to release devices “for a range of markets” running the platform. Exactly when that will take place is unclear, however.

Android

Android is a mostly free operating system mainly developed by Google. Unfortunately, the drivers for most devices and most applications from the “market” are not free (as in free speech, not free beer). They frequently work against the interest of the users, spy on them and sometimes can not even be removed.

Just like it said it would, ASUS has formally unveiled its versatile, form-changing Padfone at Mobile World Congress. There are two stories here, and they’re both quite compelling, frankly. On the one hand, you’ve got yet another high-end device, with a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED qHD display, Snapdragon’s new dual-core S4 chip, an Adreno 225 GPU, Ice Cream Sandwich and an 8-megapixel rear camera with an LED flash and f/2.2 autofocusing lens. (The front camera records at VGA resolution.) Other specs include 16 to 64GB of internal storage (expandable via microSD), Bluetooth 4.0, HDMI, GPS, A-GPS, a gyroscope, 1,520mAh battery and a compass. Connectivity options include WCDMA (900, 2100 MHz), EDGE / GPRS / GSM (850, 1800 and 1900 MHz) and HSPA+, with theoretical download speeds topping out at 42Mbps. Barring LTE, we wouldn’t expect much less from a flagship launched at the world’s premier wireless show.

Siri may be the media darling and, admittedly she’s the one with the winning personality. But Motorola wants to remind you that Android has a voice control app of its own and argues it’s better than its iPhone 4S exclusive competition. In a series of videos, which we’ve embedded after the break, Moto pits Voice Actions against Siri on a trio of handsets — the Atrix 2, Photon 4G and Electrify. A faceless taskmaster tells the handset to send a text, pull up driving directions and load a website. In each of the tests, Voice Actions bests the polite lady inside the iPhone and gets crowned the champ. Though, we can’t help but think things would have turned out differently if the competition involved finding the meaning of life.

With an eye on reducing ongoing software costs, the Veterans Affairs Department said it is exploring alternatives to Microsoft Corp.’s longstanding Office Suite productivity software that has dominated federal desktops for two decades.

The VA currently owns and operates the 2003, 2007 and 2010 versions of Office, which include Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and which are being used by more than 300,000 VA employees. Use of the integrated software suite has provided for interoperability between the VA’s many units.

Umit, an open source organization that’s loosely affiliated with Google, is preparing Open Monitor, a free and open source tool that will allow customers and service providers to monitor Internet connectivity conditions from any part of the world. If Open Minitor works as advertised, I wonder if there are potential integration opportunities with traditional RMM (remote monitoring and management) software that many MSPs already leverage.

Open source began in the late 1970s and early 80s as a way of preserving the sharing ethos upon which early computer science was built. Since then it has grown well beyond its original scope, and now underscores the creation of many creative works.

Patent law is also directed towards a similar end, but encourages individuals rather than groups. So does the success of open source suggest patent law, as we know it, is set to change?

We talk about networking quite a bit on AnandTech, covering everything from the upper end of home routers to WiFi stacks in smartphones and extending all the way up to 10GbE in the enterprise. What we haven’t really talked much about is some of the open source networking software that’s out there to improve and manage your network.

Events

A not-so-intimate group of healthcare IT professionals (a record-setting 37,032 attendees) gathered February 20 at the 2012 HIMSS conference in Las Vegas. They kicked off a week of talks, discussions and collaboration sessions addressing ways to tackle the challenges in the healthcare IT industry.

Web Browsers

Mozilla

Firefox’s powerful add-on system is arguably one of the browser’s best features, but it is also occasionally a source of problems for Mozilla. Policing the add-on ecosystem to ensure that third-party code doesn’t degrade the quality of the Firefox user experience is a major challenge. It’s a problem across the ecosystem of web browsers, and some vendors, like Microsoft with its upcoming Metro version of Internet Explorer, don’t allow third-party plugins at all. In contrast, Firefox users have a sea of add-ons at their disposal, but there is danger lurking below the surface.

This week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Mozilla announced that Telefonica and Deutsche Telekom plan to build phones based on B2G, a platform that will run all apps on the phone, including basic apps like a phone dialer and SMS client, from the Web. Telefonica said it expects to release a low-cost phone running the technology this year; DT didn’t disclose additional details.

When Mozilla first announced the B2G project last July, it said it expected to use parts of Android to compile the platform. But it ultimately didn’t have to, said Jonathan Nightingale, senior director of Firefox engineering for Mozilla.

When we think of HTML5 as a mobile platform, devices are not what come to mind. The mobile Web, almost by definition, is an amorphous set of technologies, standards, designs, contents and ideas. The mobile Web is more of a Wild West these days then its desktop counterpart. Mozilla is attempting to give the mobile Web shape and definition and today announced a partnership that will bring the first HTML5-based mobile operating system to a device in 2012.

SaaS

Now that Apache.org has listed more than 150 enterprises as Hadoop users — including JPMorgan Chase, IBM, Google, Booz Allen Hamilton and the New York Times — it seems likely that the big data management system could soon become all the rage among corporate IT executives.

But analysts and early users warn that companies should move slowly to take advantage of the open-source technology, noting that Hadoop requires extensive training along with analytics expertise not seen in many IT shops today.

Oracle/Java/LibreOffice

t was quite a month for the Document Foundation; the press rightly picked our three main announcements: the 3.5 release, the foundation’s incorporation and our partnership with Intel. I would like to go back to the foundation matter and show why the two other announcements are made more significant by the fact that we are now officially established and incorporated as a legal entity.

Project Releases

Public Services/Government

But Mark Taylor, CEO of small open source company Sirius, who was appointed by the Cabinet Office to lead its New Suppliers to Government working group says the next CIO leadership must do more to open up the marketplace and work with other areas of government such as the procurement team to bring about change.

“Some two years into the government’s term and so far not an enormous amount of progress has been made in terms of improving the number of SMEs doing business with government,” he says.

The government still has little concept of how to deal with SMEs, he says. His company was recently contacted by a public sector organisation requiring a Linux refresh, which asked it to complete a 200-plus page booklet – a prohibitive procedure for time and cash poor small businesses.

Licensing

The use of open source software enables application developers to build better applications more efficiently and cost effectively. Yet, open source license compliance in the app store setting can be a bit puzzling.

Openness/Sharing

Open Data

You’ll know that open data is a cause close to my heart, and I welcome your initiative. You’ll be aware that back in December I put forward an ambitious legal proposal to unlock the goldmine and open up Europe’s public sector, through a system that would be cheaper, easier to use and wider in scope than current rules. In legal terms, these take the form of amendments to the Public Sector Information (PSI) Directive: that means they are proposed by the Commission, but then must be agreed by both the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers before becoming law – and indeed those bodies have already held initial discussions on this topic.

Open Access/Content

The open-source method of learning would allow instructors to create and share information for all students to utilize. This type of education system is open to the whole world, which would share information on an immense level. While open-source books are the ideal solution to the high costs of textbooks, eTexts are a step in the right direction. In the meantime, students should use eTexts and push for an open-source learning model instead of pricey textbooks.

Programming

Open source projects and organisations have until Friday, 9 March at 23:00 GMT to apply to mentor students as part of this year’s Google Summer of Code (GSoC) event. Projects interested in applying can register (sign in required) for the eighth annual event now; application requirements can be found on the FAQ page and a Mentor Manual is provided.

Finance

Stratfor, the intelligence firm at the centre of the latest WikiLeaks/Anonymous tie-up, attempted to set up an investment fund with a Goldman Sachs director to trade on the intelligence collected by Stratfor.

In 2009, the then managing director of the investment bank, Shea Morenz, planned to utilise the intelligence from the insider network “to start up a captive strategic investment fund”.

“What StratCap will do is use our Stratfor’s intelligence and analysis to trade in a range of geopolitical instruments, particularly government bonds, currencies and the like,” reads an email by Stratfor’s CEO George Friedman.

PR/AstroTurf/Lobbying

After news outlets reported Monday that Governor Scott Walker would not be challenging recall signatures, the governor quietly submitted a request asking that the state elections board accept challenges from an effort involving a Texas organization with a history of voter suppression.

Intellectual Monopolies

Copyrights

Mr. Dodd, I hear you’ve just given a speech in which you said “Hollywood is pro-technology and pro-Internet.” It seems you’re looking for interlocutors among the coalition that defeated SOPA and PIPA, and are looking for some politically feasible compromise that will do something against the problem of Internet piracy as you believe you understand it.

There isn’t any one person who can answer your concerns. But I can speak for one element of the coalition that blocked those two bills; the technologists. I’m not talking about Google or the technology companies, mind you – I’m talking about the actual engineers who built the Internet and keep it running, who write the software you rely on every day of your life in the 21st century.

ACTA

Negotiations on ACTA were formerly announced on October 23, 2007. The ACTA announcement came less than three weeks after the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) adopted the “Development Agenda,” and was part of a broader strategy by right holders to move norm setting and technical assistance into more secretive, closed and captured institutions.

Contents

I suspected Terrence O’Brien was a Linux user when I started noticing he seemed to be behind just about all of Engadget’s Linux coverage. It turns out I was right about Terrence. Not only that, he gets a lot of work done through his Ubuntu setup. Also, his dream setup is pretty great. I think I’m stealing it for my dream.

Purpose-built Linux distros are appearing faster than zombies in a first-person shooter. Need a drop-in replacement for Microsoft’s Primary Domain Controller? Try the Domain Controller Appliance. Working with the public schools? Now you can install Moodle for e-learning and course management in minutes thanks to the Moodle Appliance. Customer wants a Wiki? Download the TWiki enterprise wiki platform and you’re good to go.

These systems exist today because someone has taken the trouble to do the work of assembling, installing and integrating the application stack, testing and debugging them and bundling them as ready-to-deploy VMs for VMware, Xen and other hypervisors, as ISOs for bare metal, or directly to Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud for access through a browser.

Kernel Space

It looks like the debacle concerning RC6 power-savings support for Intel Sandy Bridge hardware is finally behind us. Intel thinks everything is worked out and ready to be enabled upstream (again) with the next Linux 3.4 kernel cycle and Canonical has enabled RC6 by default in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Here are some tests showing the performance benefits and power-saving abilities of using the RC6 hardware feature on Sandy Bridge processors.

While this weekend saw the release of the Linux 3.3-rc5 kernel, which Linus Torvalds self-admitted was pretty boring, also hitting the mailing list this past week were new kernel patches to implement auto-sleep and “wake locks” support.

Now I’m about as big of a fan of open source as they come, but I’m not sure if this is the proper course for cause and effect. I’ve done a lot of thinking about Linus’ Law in the past few months as part of the Red Hat Product Security Team. What the Coverity report shows is that open source has fewer of the kind of defects Coverity can detect. That’s really it.

Applications

When Adobe announced last week that it plans to discontinue its standalone Flash Player for Linux, it noted that updated versions of Flash Player will subsequently be available to Linux users only through Google’s Chrome browser.

Every time I say something negative about Linux I feel like I should preface it by offering up some grand sweeping adoration for both the operating system and the world-wide collection of developers that work tirelessly on the development of the platform. So, consider this my proclamation of adoration. But…

After a week with SalineOS I would say my experience thus far has been fairly good. The project’s documentation is helpful, the installer is quite novice friendly and I encountered no problems getting set up. The distribution is light on resources, but comes with a full range of software (and Debian’s large repositories). Being based on Debian Squeeze, some of the available software is a bit old (Iceweasel is still on version 3.5), but I didn’t find I was missing functionality due to the age of the software. SalineOS provides a quick and easy way to get up and running with a Debian-based system. I like that we’re given the choice of staying with Debian’s free software policy or installing non-free extras. There were aspects of the system I’d like to see changed or fixed. For instance, having my keyboard layout change to a French setting was an unwelcome bug. The update button in the system tray works well enough, but given SalineOS’ friendly approach to most things, I think it makes sense to put a graphical update tool in its place. Also a matter of taste, I think it would make sense to name items in the application menu by their purpose rather than by the application’s name. “LibreOffice” is easy enough to figure out, but new users might be curious as to what “Iceweasel”, “Icedove” and “Catfish” do, especially since Iceweasel and Icedove are names not typically seen outside of the Debian community.

Admittedly, these are pretty minor complaints and I think if these are the worst issues I ran into when using SalineOS that shows just how well the small project is doing. It’s a light, fast distro with a good collection of software and the project makes it easy to get a Debian-based desktop installed quickly. If you don’t mind using venerable packaging tools like Synaptic and apt-get then I recommend giving SalineOS a try.

Red Hat Family

Oracle has now made Ksplice available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 and 6. Red Hat customers who are interested in this solution for fixing kernel security holes during operation can download a 30-day trial version after completing a registration form; however, the announcement does not state whether Red Hat will still provide support for such a modified version.

Debian Family

Derivatives

There’s good news for many, and perhaps bad news for a few, coming for Linux Mint Debian Edition. This has been one of my favorite distributions since it was first released, because it seems to me that it stars from the Debian GNU/Linux base and then adds all of the goodness of Linux Mint, without passing through Ubuntu on the way. If you consider SimplyMEPIS, which I recently mentioned with their new release to be a small step forward from the Debian base distribution, then Linux Mint Debian Edition would be a huge leap forward. Of particular significance are things like the latest Linux kernel (their current distribution includes 3.0.0, the update is to 3.2.0), X.org/Xserver (1.10.4) and such.

Canonical/Ubuntu

When we first saw the FXI Cotton Candy, a dual-core Android / Ubuntu computer on a USB stick, we were blown away by the unique device’s tiny size and enormous promise, but we were also left wondering when we could buy one.

The bottom line is that Apple’s current performance isn’t sustainable. The losses the carriers are presently eating on the iPhone are going to get squeezed out one way or another, almost certainly re-manifesting as significantly higher unit prices to the consumer. This, of course, will increase Android’s competitive advantage.

Phones

Android

I love numbers. They can be measured and specified with arbitrary precision. They can bore, dampen or exhilarate one’s feelings.

Android/Linux latest numbers really are great:

* 850000 activations per day,
* 300 million installed devices,
* 450K apps in Android Market,
* 1 billion app-downloads from Android Market per month,
* more than 800 Android/Linux products have been manufactured so far, and
* more than 100 are on display at MWC 2011.

I don’t think there is anybody here who haven’t heard about Reddit before. Founded in June 2005, Reddit gradually won over the tech-savvy internet crowd leaving the once prominent Digg.com in shambles. 2011 was an year of explosive growth for Reddit. In December 2011 alone, reddit served a massive 2.07 billion pageviews. From the day I got my first Android phone, the one thing I was constantly looking for was a nice and simple app to enjoy Reddit. I found quite a number of them and I think following are the best 6 Reddit apps for Android.

Orange has announced their first Android handset to feature an Intel Medfield chipset, tapping the Santa Clara with a summer release. Making its debut as Europe’s first Android smartphone to pack the new mobile processor, the device will launch with Android 2.3 Gingerbread but see an Ice Cream Sandwich update shortly thereafter.

Sub-notebooks/Tablets

Time and again, the government and the Department of IT have aspired to come out with a computing device that is cheap, efficient and convenient — whether it was the Rs 10,000 Linux-based mobile computer from Encore Software in 2005, or the Simputer, the hand-held low-cost computing device introduced by Encore again (in collaboration with PicoPeta).

What is a PC. Will we need them. The split between the 3 markets of Phone, Laptop and Tablet most likely will get smaller.

First thing this review points out is that the tablet is heavier than other tablets. Of course is simple to forget a device like this the tablet is a dock. So you can leave the dock in the room and not worry about any secure information being taken since the secure information is in the phone you took out of it.

The recently released Open Advice has much to offer those who are new to free software and its communities, but there is plenty of interest to veterans as well. It is a collection of essays from an auspicious number of contributors (42) to free and open source software (FOSS) that centers around the idea of “what we wish we had known when we started”. As might be guessed, the book encompasses more than that—it ranges all over the FOSS map—including recollections, war stories, philosophical musings, academic research, and good advice.

Founded in 1998, Caucho Technology released version 1.0 of resin in 1999. Companies including the Toronto Stock Exchange, Salesforce and CNET have deployed on Resin, the Java Application Server designed for high-traffic sites that require speed and scalability.

Open source made new things possible for more people. One commenter said, “Open soruce technologies give me freedom…I was the prisoner of proprietary technologies for many years…open source gives me [options] a free choice.”

Another commenter pointed out that open source empowers them to help others. They said, “I have also used open source to provide computer systems to people that would otherwise not be able to afford a new one with a proprietary system…”

Web Browsers

Mozilla

Telecom operator Telefonica, Qualcomm and Mozilla Foundation, creator of Firefox Internet browser, who have worked on creating the platform since last year, will show devices running it at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona.

Programming

Security

A patch that was recently introduced to the Firefox repository is designed to make the browser more secure by forcing certain binary extensions to use ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomisation) under Windows. The Mozilla developers say that the change, which will prevent XPCOM (Cross Platform Component Object Module) component DLLs without ASLR from loading, should be included in Firefox 13 “if no unexpected problems arise”

Censorship

If you’re scratching your head, you’re not the only one. There’s clearly nothing infringing in our post. I just wasted too much time going through all 300+ comments on that post and I don’t see anything that includes any porn or even links to any porn as far as I can tell. Instead, it seems that Armovore and Paper Street Cash sent a clearly bogus DMCA takedown notice, which served the purpose of censoring our key blog post in the SOPA fight. And they did it on January 20th… the day that SOPA was officially shelved.

There are some other oddities in that list as well, including TorrentFreak’s article about how ICE took down 84,000 websites illegally by seizing the mooo.com domain and saying that all 84,000 of those sites were involved in child porn.

In other words, two separate articles that have been key to the discussion concerning abuses of copyright law… both taken out of Google’s index due to a bogus DMCA takedown. Hmm….

While many of the other links do appear to go to sites that may offer up infringing content, just looking at the URLs alone make you wonder what most of them have to do with Paper Street Cash or TeamSkeet. Some of the links talk about top Christian albums. One is to some Dave Matthews songs. Another is to Wiz Khalifa music. There’s another one that appears to be a link to downloads of the TV show Prison Break. Obviously those things may be infringing, but the notice itself only talks about TeamSkeet, and if Armovore doesn’t represent those other artists, it may have broken the law in pretending to.

Copyrights

ACTA

The 7th round of Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement negotiations begins tomorrow in Guadalajara, Mexico. The negotiation round will be the longest to-date, with three and a half days planned to address civil enforcement, border measures, the Internet provisions, and (one hour for) transparency. Over the next five days, I plan to post a five-part ACTA Guide that will include sourcing for much of the discussion on ACTA, links to all the leaked documents, information on the transparency issue, and a look at who has been speaking out.

I start today with a lengthy backgrounder for those new to ACTA or looking to catch up on recent developments. There are several ways to get up-to-speed. The recent Google-sponsored debate was very informative, particularly on the transparency issue. There has been some helpful mainstream media coverage from the Washington Post (Copyright Overreach Takes a World Tour, Q & A on ACTA) and the Irish Times (Secret agreement may have poisonous effect on the net). The Command Line ran a podcast on the topic last week and I’ve posted interviews on ACTA I did with Search Engine and CBC’s As It Happens. Last last year I also created a timeline that tracks the evolution of ACTA and I gave a talk on ACTA last November that highlights the major developments in about 20 minutes (embedded below).

Despite an attempt from the Commission to buy time and defuse the political debate, important meetings will take place this week in the European Parliament to decide on the future of ACTA. Citizens must call on their representatives to work without delay towards the rejection of this illegitimate agreement.